The Cyclops Effect by CJ Williams

Author:CJ Williams [Williams, CJ]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-01-20T05:00:00+00:00

*.*.*.*

The next morning Asha wasn’t up for breakfast, so she filled a glass with orange juice from the breakfast buffet. Rosalee and Wilson arrived together precisely on time. They settled for coffee.

“All right,” Asha opened. “Here I am. Ms. Bryant said you wanted my assistance on something. I’m listening.”

Wilson glared at both Asha and Rosalee as though hating what he had to say. “This is not from me, personally.”

“I assumed as much. If I thought it was, I wouldn’t be here.”

“The US government is under attack.”

Asha rolled her eyes. “That’s a well-accepted statement, and totally useless.”

“If you’re so good at what you do, you should already know what I’m referring to.”

Asha glanced at Rosalee as if to say, see what I mean? She closed her eyes and connected with the hotel wi-fi, and then to one of her leased data servers in Cleveland. Last night she had asked Abbot to do precisely what Rosalee had mentioned. Starting with Wilson himself, Abbot sifted through his recent emails for anything about attempting to recruit assistance for data security concerns.

The only reference was a single message from the Justice Department in Washington DC concerning DOD purchasing. Abbot looked into it and discovered it was a real problem. Reports from DOD and NSA teams were confounded.

An email blast was sent out with a warning and a search for possible solutions. The urgency was underlined by a suspected security breach in a contract to upgrade counter ECM systems for the new Gerald R. Ford Class of aircraft carriers.

Abbot uncovered the general area of interest last night while Asha had taken a shower and washed her hair. Before going to bed, she asked him to drill down on all purchase contracts having to do with aircraft carriers and report any anomalies. By morning the report was ready for her to retrieve. Asha scanned through it quickly before going down to breakfast.

At the table, Asha sighed as though the question was not worth her time. “I suppose you’re talking about electronic countermeasures for the USS Gerald Ford?”

Wilson looked like she had kicked him under the table. He leaned back and his mouth literally hung open.

Asha continued, “It shouldn’t really be a surprise that these troubles have cropped up. As you may be aware, the General Services Administration handles bids for defense contracts through a website called Fed Biz Ops. That stands for Federal Business Opportunities. The problem here is that GSA contracted the Web hosting to PKP Defense Services Corporation. Unfortunately, the management team at PKP decided they could save money by hosting the website themselves rather than through a US-based cloud provider like Amazon or Microsoft or IBM. Those facilities include fairly robust protection against hostile actors.”

“How do you know that?” Rosalee asked, as astonished as Wilson by the narrative.

“Because they advertise it on TV,” Asha replied as though she were talking to a third-grader. “But wait; it gets better. The majority owner of PKP is a guy named Pratyush Kabir Patel. He’s a nice guy, but he sold a piece of his company to a cousin in India in exchange for some technical help.

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